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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

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Warship Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024: Slow Going

Above we see the Porter-class destroyer USS Moffett (DD-362) underway in Charleston, South Carolina passing under the Cooper Bridge on 1 March 1944. She was headed to the Big Apple, to undertake one of the screwiest– and most important– convoys of the war.

The Porters

Designed as “Gold-plater” destroyer leaders (of which 13 were allowed under the London Naval Treaty) to host a commodore of a four-piper DESRON and likewise make up for the American shortfall in light cruisers in the early 1930s, the eight twin-stack Porter-class destroyer leaders (381 feet oal, 1850 tons, 50,000shp, 37 knots, 8x 5-inch guns, 8x torpedo tubes) generated 50,000 shp to allow for 37 knots. The torpedo battery carried a reload, allowing the ships to pack 16 Mark 11 or 12 (later Mark 15) torpedoes.

A typical 1930s Porter:

They even had a class of follow-on half-sisters, the Somers, with a slightly different topside appearance to include three 4-tube torpedo turnstiles and a single funnel:

Another thing that the Porters and Somers shared besides hulls was their peculiar Mark 22 mounts for their twin 5″/38 guns. These were limited elevation gun houses that relegated these rapid-fire guns to being capable of surface actions only.

As noted by Navweaps:

“Their low maximum elevation of +35 degrees of elevation was adopted mainly as a weight savings, as it was calculated that these ships would only be able to carry six DP guns rather than the eight SP guns that they actually did carry. The Mark 22 mounting used a 15 hp training motor and a 5 hp elevating motor.”

Most of the Porters and Somers would have their low-angle 4×2 Mark 22s replaced later in the war with 3×2 Mark 38 DP mounts, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Still, these destroyers got their SP 5 inchers into the fight during the upcoming war, as we shall see.

As for AAA, most as commissioned carried two “Chicago Piano” quad 1.1-inch mounts and a pair of flexible water-cooled .50 caliber MGs, guns that would soon be replaced during the war with 20mm Orelikons and 40mm Bofors.

Meet Moffett

Our destroyer was the first (and so far only) in U.S. naval service to carry the name of RADM William Adger Moffett (USNA 1890) who earned a Medal of Honor while skipper of the cruiser USS Chester in a daring and dangerous night landing in 1914 at Veracruz, later became known as the architect of naval aviation and was killed in the loss of the airship/aircraft carrier USS Akron (ZRS-4) in 1933 at age 63– just six months shy of his mandatory retirement.

Moffett (DD‑362) was laid down on 2 January 1934 at Quincy, Massachusetts by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation.

Launched on 11 December 1935, she was sponsored by Miss Beverly Moffett, the daughter of the late admiral.

She was commissioned at Boston on 28 August 1936.

Quiet Interwar Service

Soon after delivery, Moffett, assigned to the Atlantic Fleet, slipped into a cycle of summer cruises to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, where she took part in exercises and gunnery drills in addition to regional port calls.

When FDR kicked off the Neutrality Patrol, Moffett once again roamed to points south, her old stomping grounds. In 1940, Moffett, operating out of Puerto Rico, was part of the task group keeping tabs on the Vichy French West Indies fleet based at Martinique and Guadeloupe that included the carrier Bearn and the light cruisers Jeanne d’Arc and Émile Bertin.

By August 1941, Moffett was detailed to escort the heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31) as the latter carried Roosevelt to the Atlantic Charter Conference with Churchill at Argentia, Newfoundland.

Soon after, things got hot.

War!

Post Pearl Harbor, Moffett once again ended up in South Atlantic waters, tasked with a series of patrol and convoy missions including several voyages to West African parts.

U-128

On 17 May 1943, as Moffett and her Somers-class half-sister USS Jouett (DD-396) were on escort duty south of Recife, Brazil, and were directed to a nearby surface contact where PBMs of VP-74 had spotted and fired a German submarine, the Type IX-C U-128 (Oblt. Hermann Steinert), some 42 days out of Lorient.

Moffett fired 150 shells of 5-inch Common at the sub, hitting the boat at least six times.

Once U-128 took her final dive, Moffett stood by to rescue the survivors, numbering 51–four of which later died of wounds, a combination of chlorine poisoning and shrapnel. As detailed in later ONI interrogations of U-128’s crew, Moffett’s officers and crew “received high praise from all prisoners for the good treatment received while aboard her.”

The impounded property taken from U-128’s crew, as noted by Moffett in her report:

U-604

Across three days in August, while escorting the Omaha-class light cruiser USS Memphis (CL-13) and a merchant ship to windswept Ascension Island, Moffett made contact with what is believed to be the Type VIIC U‑604 (Kptlt. Horst Höltring) and fought the German so hard that her new skipper, LCDR Gilbert Haven Richards (USNA 1933) thought it was two different engagements.

With Navy aircraft in support, the running fight ensued through the night until the submarine surfaced some 95 miles north of Trinidad the next morning, with Moffett smothering her in shells until she disappeared.

From her report: 

Three days later, while still escorting Memphis, and again with the aid of aircraft, a sonar contact was regained and a submarine believed badly damaged by Moffett’s depth charges.

As DANFs notes, “In the dark and confusion of action, a friendly aircraft mistaking Moffett for the enemy made two strafing runs which caused minor damage. The stricken submarine was finally scuttled by her crew on 11 August; Moffett was credited with the kill.”

Throughout the action, Moffett’s gunners expended 28 star shells and 104 rounds of 5-inch common. She also suffered 13 men injured by blue-on-blue strafing.

From her report:

Then came a refit at Charleston followed by her most taxing convoy experience, this time in the North Atlantic.

Convoy NY‑78

On 25 March, designated TF 67, Moffett got underway from Pier 80 in the North River to join Convoy NY-78 (sometimes incorrectly seen as YN-78) as its sole destroyer and convoy commander. The “NY” convoy code denoted a New York-to-Britain slow convoy of which 57 transited between August 1943 and November 1943.

However, NY-78 would be very special indeed, and the Overlord landings depended on it.

The primary goal was to move 34 large (250 feet on average) railway car barges (or car floats) a type of vessel common in the Big Apple but rare and desperately needed for the logistics end of the D-Day landings, to Europe.

Capable of carrying 1,000 tons of deck cargo but only drawing 6 feet while doing it, these would be needed to move ammo and fuel into the landing beaches starting D+1.

These big barges, unlikely able to make the tow across the Atlantic in any sort of heavy seas, were specially modified into “Pickabacks” which meant lashing smaller composite barges taken up from coastal trade– including oil barges and wooden scows– to their decks, installing stronger cleats for the haul, reinforcing the hulls and decks via timber and concrete, making it all watertight by adding new covers and hatches– often replacing repurposed manhole covers– and welding on large skegs to cut down their tendency to yaw.

These Pickabacks took months to prepare, under the guidance of Capt. Edmond J. Moran, the scion of the NYC area’s go-to tugboat operation, Moran Towing. Work was done across a half-dozen Hudson area shipyards and terminals to rush the project to completion. Interestingly, since the barges were too large to lift via crane, the solution to make the Pickabacks was to install seacocks in the bottom of the railway car floats while in the bottom of a dry dock, open the dock, and allow the barge to submerge, float in the scows atop it, then close and slowly drain the dock, stacking the whole affair upon itself where it could then be lashed together.

From an August 1945 Popular Science piece published “Now it can be told” style:

Moffett’s point man would be the newly commissioned Buckley-class destroyer escort USS Marsh (DE-699) which was sailing on just her third Atlantic convoy. Her left and right arms would be Marsh’s sisters, USS Runnels (DE-793) and USS Tatum (DE-789), who were fresh off their shakedown and on their first convoy run. The Auk-class minesweeper USS Staff (AM-114)— destined to be the leading ship of the minesweeping group that led the invasion on D-Day– would also tag along.

A force of a dozen small 173-foot subchasers-– PCs 564, 565, 567, 568, 617, 618, 619, 1232, 1233, 1252, 1261, and 1262-– would accompany the force as a way to get them to Europe, where they would be desperately needed just off the surf line during the landings.

To tow the 34 Pickabacks, the convoy had a motley mix of two dozen tugs that would remain in Europe for Overlord. This included the large 205-foot Cherokee/Abnaki-class fleet tugs USS Kiowa (AT-72), USS Bannock (AT-81), USS Pinto (AT-90), USS Abnaki (AT-96), USS Alsea (AT-97), and USS Arikara (AT-98); the Texas-built 143-foot Admiralty tug HMS Emphatic (W 154), the smaller 143-foot Sotoyomo-class rescue tugs ATR-97, ATR-98, and ATR-99; the 165-foot wooden hulled ATR-4, ATR-13, and ATR-15; and 10 large 186-foot ocean-going Maritime Commission contracted V4-M-A1 tugs (Black Rock, Bodie Island, Farallon, Gay Head, Great Isaac, Hillsboro Inlet, Moose Peak, Sabine Pass, Sankaty Head, and Trinidad Head) owned by the WSA and operated by civilian mariners of Moran Towing. As with the barges, these craft would all be needed on D-Day both to beach the ammo barges and to tow the hundreds of massive concrete caissons as part of Operation Mulberry. Later, they towed damaged ships to Britain for salvage or repair.

To provide fuel for the short-legged flotilla, the old oiler USS Maumee (AO-2), which had been in mothballs before the war, was sent along. Too slow for fleet work at just 13 knots top speed, but that wouldn’t be a problem on NY-78.

Highlights distilled from Moffett’s March and April 1944 War Diaries.

Sound contacts were reported on almost every day at some point, requiring general quarters and investigation. The convoy stretched out over more than 10 miles, sometimes twice that much, leaving Moffat to order individual PCs to form clusters and smaller sub-convoys inside the group. Every night brought an order to darken ships and every morning brought the need to inspect the spiderweb of towlines and count noses.

So many lines bridles and towlines were lost that Maumee’s machine shop set to nearly round-the-clock work turning fathoms of 1 5/8-inch beaching gear wire rope and thimbles into new bridles. Stragglers were a fact of life.

On 27 March, Convoy UC-16, composed of empty fast-moving tankers and freighters headed back from Britain to pick up waiting cargos in New York, was sighted in the distance, speeding away.

On 30 March, a mysterious keg was spotted, bumping along the convoy route. Moffett deep-sixed it via 544 rounds of 20mm and 81 of 40mm. The lagging Pinto group reported a barge down by the stern.

April Fools Day brought a breakdown, of ATR-4, which was ordered to be taken in tow by ATR-15, which in turn broke down the next day.

3 April brought an open-ocean chase down of separated barges lost from Bannock’s tow.

4 April saw Moffett’s HFDF picking up German radio transmissions and the convoy standing by while HMS Queen Mary raced by later in the morning.

5 April saw Moffett investigate an abandoned life raft found adrift. Ordered to clear the derelict, the destroyer hit it with an impressive array of ordnance– 643 rounds of 20mm, 111 of 40mm, and a Mark VI depth charge– to no avail. As noted by her log, “Raft punctured but still afloat.”

6 April saw an all-day effort to save a sinking barge in the Pinto group, with Moffett sending a 14-man DC party to dewater the vessel via portable pumps. With the barge saved, the boat returning the DC crew to the destroyer flipped in rough seas, leading to a SAR operation that stretched into the dark but recovered everyone. The next day would not be so lucky, with two of her complement in a rubber raft crushed between the destroyer and ATR-97 in heavy seas during efforts to chase down two adrift barges. The bodies were buried at sea.

And so it continued, with the deck log reading increasingly dicey, and refueling efforts repeatedly canceled due to heavy seas. Likewise, more and more barges were breaking loose. While early on in the convoy it was news if one was adrift, twos and threes became standard by the 11th.

On 12 April, ATR-98 reported a one-foot hole in her engine room following a collision in heavy seas with Abnaki. Within 40 minutes the crew, unable to counteract the flooding, were abandoning ship. Within an hour, Moffett had proceeded to the scene of the sinking tug and recovered all 44 survivors, with no casualties.

On the 16th, the lead barge being towed by ATR-4 broke in two, requiring her to heave to in heavy seas and restring her entire tow group, with the assistance of a PC and Emphatic.

The 17th brought a confusing day that began with a stack fire on USS Staff, and a 14-hour running battle with phantom sonar contacts and perceived torpedo sign that earned 19 depth charges from Staff, PC-619, and Moffett:

By the afternoon of 18 April, land-based British planes were sighted. It was over. 

The next morning, the convoy dispersed as Maumee, all the remaining tugs and barges, along with PCs 1233, 1252, 1262, and 1263 made for Falmouth under Admiralty orders while Moffett and the remaining units made for Plymouth, capping a 25-day epic run. A 3,400nm trek that averaged just under six knots!

After transferring the survivors of ATR-98 ashore, Moffett had 48 hours to replenish her bunkers and storerooms, then shoved off and headed home on the 22nd via Milford Haven and Belfast.

As for the Normandy landings, at least 16 of the large NYC rail barges delivered were loaded and towed to the landing areas where they were beached at high tide at D-Day and allowed to dry out. They were unloaded by trucks alongside when dry and LCVPs when wet. As the Navy notes on its Operation Neptune history: “During the D+12 storm [which disrupted the Mulberry harbors] this reserve supply of ammunition proved very necessary.”

The tugs gave yeoman service off Normandy, with some of the civilian-manned V4s making as many as 10 shuttle trips carrying Mulberry components, often while sidestepping German E-boats, midget subs, fire from shore batteries, mines, and aircraft.

The humble Pinto and Arikara earned Navy Unit Commendations– rare citations for tugs– off France as part of Combat Salvage and Fire Fighting Unit Force “O,” clearing wrecks from the beach area reserved for the erection of the artificial harbors and taking damaging fire in the process. Many of these tugs would pivot to the Med to take part in the Dragoon Landings in August.

The dozen 173-foot subchasers brought over in the convoy formed PC Squadron One and served as control craft for the waves of LCIs headed to the beaches on D-Day, where PC-1261 was sunk off Utah Beach by a German coastal battery 58 minutes before H-Hour.

Coming in close– skirting the surf line– the PCs traded fire with German pillboxes in an attempt to support the landings. They also pulled wounded from the water and, later that day, did the same with bodies. Then came a full month of picket duty off the beaches, intermingled with repulsing German air and boat attacks– PC-619 downed a Heinkel He 177 on D+4 and picked up its sole survivor. They shuttled senior officers and dispatches from England to Normandy, blew up floating mines with their 20mm guns, escorted coal barges from Newcastle to France, and PC-1262 even patrolled down the river Seine, escorting a load of potatoes to the emaciated citizens of Rouen. The vessels of PCRON1 went on to blockade the Channel Islands, fight it out with E-boats, rescue freezing survivors from the SS Leopoldville, and were among the first American ships in a German port during the war, sailing into Bremerhaven to occupy the port in May 1945.

While the vessels of Convoy NY-78 went on to great things, Moffett’s war was on the last few innings.

End Game

Moffett went on to ride shotgun on several late war convoys from the East Coast to the Med and back including UGS 48 (July 1944: Hampton Roads – Port Said), GUS 48 (Aug 1944: Port Said – Hampton Roads), UGS 55 (Sept. 1944: Hampton Roads – Port Said), GUS 55 (Oct 1944: Port Said – Hampton Roads), UGS 62 (Dec 1944: Hampton Roads – Gibraltar), UGS 71 (Jan. 1945: Hampton Roads – Southern France), and UGS 83 (March 1945: Hampton Roads – Gibraltar).

Of note, Moffett was typically chosen to carry the TF/Convoy commander on these runs, which would include over a dozen, usually newer, escorts and as many as 70 merchies. She had a reputation for good luck and success– plus space for a commodore.

These convoys were largely anti-climatic milk runs except for UGS 48 which was twice attacked by enemy aircraft including an ineffective night attack by German He 111s and a follow-up by Italian S.79 torpedo bombers of Gruppo Buscaglia-Faggioni, leaving a Liberty ship (MV Samsylarna) damaged.

Moffett’s diagram of the He 111 attack, which saw the German bombers come in at mast top level at 2 a.m., defeating the destroyer’s SC-type radar:

After UGS 83, Moffett made for Boston NSY in April 1945 to begin extended repairs.

Following VE-Day, she was towed to Charleston for an extensive refit that planned to beef up her AAA suite and replace her 5-inchers with newer models.

However, she was still in the yard at VJ Day and this reconstruction was halted.

She decommissioned on 2 November 1945, spent 14 months in mothballs, and then was stricken and sold for scrap on 16 May 1947 to the Boston Metals Co. of Baltimore.

Moffett only received 2 battle stars for World War II service.

Epilogue

Few relics other than postcards and canceled postal stamps remain of Moffett.

Her War Diaries are digitized in the National Archives. 

The Navy has not used the name “Moffett” for a second warship, perhaps because they renamed the old NAS Sunnyvale in California to Moffett Field, a moniker that endures even after the Navy pulled out in 1994, turning it over to NASA.

Of her our greyhound’s sisters, class leader Porter was torpedoed and lost at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in 1942; Selfridge survived a torpedo in the night action at Vella Lavella, and Phelps was damaged by shore battery fire off Saipan in 1944. Like Moffett, none survived long after the war, and all were soon scrapped, made obsolete by newer Fletcher, Sumner, and Gearing-class destroyers.

Speaking of which, Moffett’s sixth skipper, Capt. Gil Richards– who was in command during the grueling multi-day battle with U-604 and the crazy NY-78 convoy– ended the war as the commander of the new Gearing-class tin can USS Kenneth D. Bailey (DD-713).

Postwar, in the summer of 1946, Richards was hospitalized at Bethesda Naval Hospital suffering from “the rigors of continuous sea duty,” and soon retired to civilian life. Moving to New Jersey, he died in 1983, aged 72. His civilian life was as successful as his Navy life, but his son noted, “His heart never left the U.S. Navy.”

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Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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